Porcelain Madness

Welcome to Porcelain Madness, a decorative annex to The Mystic Tea Room.

Here's a beautiful 6-inch black-and-white desert plate made by Warwick for the Culbertson Hills Golf Course in Edinboro, Pennsylvania in 1930, the year it opened. The artwork and lettering are superb -- and the same uncredited artist also produced a gorgeous matching brochure for the country club. I love lettering, i love art deco line art, i love cumulus clouds in art (and these are amazing clouds!) ... but i don't love the Culbertson Hills Golf Course, which advertised that it was "open to the pubic under restrictions which the company imposes, of course" -- specifically, that membership was offered "only to Gentile people." In other words, no Jews were allowed -- and neither were African Americans. I have no idea if or when Culbertson Hills changed its racial and religious exclusion policies, but this beautiful plate remains a symbol of the finest commercial art of its time, in the service of the ugliest discrimination of its time.

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